I am cleaning out my files and discovered (rediscovered is more correct as I knew these pieces were there), writing from decades ago. I must say that teacher looking forward to a career in education knew his stuff.
For proof, I submit this from the fall of 1992. (At the time, I was starting my fifth year in as a teacher. I has started that fall at my second school, and I expect it was not going well. (I recall realizing about 60 minutes into my time there that I had made a mistake; the school was not what they claimed to be.)
At some point during that fall, I wrote in my journal about the things that make middle school team effective. This list included individual teachers, direction, flexibility, and control. Three of the four items on the list had only incomplete thoughts (I guess I figured I was going to complete them, but here it is almost 25 years later, and they remain incomplete.)
For direction, I wrote:
The primary direction for the team must be provided by the needs of the students. The next level of directions must be provided by the individual teachers on the team. Next, the team as a group must provide direction.
I could stop there. Students, teachers, (and in middle schools at the time) teams are the most important people to decide what the students need. I did continue, however, and describe the curriculum, the administration, educational research as secondarily important. Standards are not on the list as 1992 was early in the standards movement, and we never talked about data at the time. (We did, however, have meetings where we talked about teaching and learning.) My last two sentences are worth quoting:
The first three levels of direction (from the students, from the individual teachers, and from the team as a whole) must be “cast in stone” in that order. The other source of direction border on the superfluous.
Look back on almost 40 years in education, I know I was correct.
Most that we spend our time worrying about in education are red herrings. They don’t matter. Students do matter. We have forgotten that at all levels of education. Until we change that focus, schools will continue to be irrelevant.